bunch the terrorists in the flight deck of the target aircraft as they tried to figure out the reason for the lights. The brilliance of the flares would also sear the retina of the terrorists” eyes and destroy night vision for many minutes afterwards.
“Flares!” shouted Colin, and the assault group went into action.
The two “stick” men led them, sprinting out directly under the gigantic tail of the deserted aircraft. Each of them carried a gas cylinder strapped across his shoulder, to which the long stainless steel probes were attached by flexible armoured couplings these were the “sticks”
that gave them their name.
The leader carried compressed air in the tank upon his back at a pressure of 250 atmospheres, and on the tip of his twenty-foot probe was the diamond cutting bit of the air drill He dropped on one knee under the belly of the aircraft ten feet behind the landing gear and reached up to press the point of the air-drill against the exact spot,
carefully plotted from the manufacturer’s drawing, where the pressure hull was thinnest and where direct access to the passenger cabins lay just beyond the skin of alloy metal.
The whine of the cutting drill would be covered by the revving of the jet engines of aircraft parked in the southern terminal. Three seconds to pierce the hull, and the second stick” man was ready to insert the tip of his probe into the drill hole.
“Power A” Colin grunted; at that moment electrical power from the mains to the aircraft would be cut to kill the air-conditioning.
The second man simulated the act of releasing the gas from the bottle on his back through the probe and saturating the air in the aircraft’s cabins. The gas was known simply as FACTOR V. It smelled faintly of newly dug truffles, and when breathed as a five per cent concentration in air would partially paralyse a man in under ten seconds, loss of motor control of the muscles, uncoordinated movement,
slurred speech and distorted vision, were initial symptoms.
Breathed for twenty seconds the symptoms were total paralysis, for thirty seconds loss of consciousness; breathed for two minutes,
pulmonary failure and death. The antidote was fresh air or, better still, pure oxygen, and recovery was rapid with no long-term.
after-effects.
The rest of the assault group had followed the “stick” men and split into four teams. They waited poised, squatting under the wings, gas masks in place, equipment and weapons ready for instant use.
Colin was watching his stopwatch. He could not chance exposing the passengers to more than ten seconds of Factor V. There would be elderly people, infants, asthma sufferers aboard; as the needle reached the ten-second mark, he snapped.
“Power on.” Air-conditioning would immediately begin washing the gas out of the cabins again, and now it was “Go!” Two assault teams poured up the aluminium. scaling ladders onto the wing roots, and knocked out the emergency window panels. The other two teams went for the main doors, but they could only simulate the use of slap-hammers to tear through the metal and reach the locking device on the interior nor could they detonate the stun grenades.
“Penetration.” The assault leader standing in for Peter Stride on this exercise signalled entry of the cabins, and Colin clicked his stopwatch.
“Time?” asked a quiet voice at his shoulder, and he turned quickly.
So intent on his task, Colin had not heard Peter Stride come up behind him.
“Eleven seconds, sir.” The courteous form of address was proof of
Colonel Colin Noble’s surprise. “Not bad but sure as hell not good either. We’ll run it again.”
“Rest them” Peter ordered. “I want to talk it out a bit.” They stood together at the full windows in the south wall of the air traffic control tower, and studied the big red,
white and blue aircraft for the hundredth time that day.
The heat of the afternoon had raised thunderheads, great purple and silver mushroom bursts of cloud that reached to the heavens.
Trailing grey skirts of torrential rain they marched across the horizon, forming a majestic backdrop that was almost too theatrical to be real, while the lowering sun found the gaps in the cloud and shot long groping fingers of golden light through them, heightening the illusion of theatre.
“Six hours to deadline,” Colin Noble grunted, and groped for one of his scented black cheroots. “Any news of concessions by the locals?”
“Nothing. I don’t think they will buy it.”
“Not until the next batch of executions.” Colin bit the end from the cheroot and spat it angrily into a corner. “For two years I break my balls training for this, and now they tie our hands behind our backs.”
“If they gave you
Delta, when would you make your run?” Peter asked.
“As soon as it was dark,“Colin answered promptly.
“No. They are still revved up high on drugs,” Peter demurred.
“We should give them time to go over the top, and start downing. My guess is they will dope again just before the next deadline. I would hit them just before that-” He paused to calculate. ” - I’d hit them at fifteen minutes before eleven seventy-five minutes before the deadline.”
“If we had Delta,“Colin grunted.
“If we had Delta,” Peter agreed, and they were silent for a moment. “Listen, Colin, this has been wearing me down. If they know my name, what else does that gang of freaks know about Thor? Do they know our contingency planning for taking an aircraft?”
“God, I hadn’t worked it out that far.”
“I have been looking for a twist, a change from the model, something that will give us the jump even if they know what to expect.”
“We’ve taken two years to set it up tightly-” Colin looked dubious. “There is nothing we can change.”
“The flares,” said
Peter. “If we went, we would not signal the Delta with the flares, we would go in cold!
“The uglies would be scattered all through the cabins, mixed up with passengers and crew-“
“The red shirt Ingrid was wearing. My guess is, all four of them will be uniformed to impress their hostages. We would hose anything and everybody in red. If my guess is wrong, then we would have to do it Israeli style.” Israeli style was the shouted command to lie down,
and to kill anyone who disobeyed or who made an aggressive move.
“The truly important one is the girl. The girl with the camera.
Have your boys studied the videotapes of her?”
“They know her face better than they do Fawcett Majors’,” Colin grunted, and then, “the bitch is so goddamned lovely I had to run the video of the executions three times for them, twice in slow motion, to wipe out a little of the old chivalry bit.” It is difficult to get a man to kill a pretty girl,
and a moment of hesitation would be critical with a trained fanatic like Ingrid. “I also made them take a look at the little girl before they put her in a basket and took her down to the morgue. They’re in the right mood.” Colin shrugged. “But what the hell, Atlas isn’t going to call Delta. We’re wasting our time.”
“Do you want to play make-believe?” Peter asked, and then without waiting for an answer,
“Let’s make believe we have a Delta approval from Atlas. I want you to set up a strike timed to “go” at exactly 10-45 local time tonight. Do it as though it was the real thing get it right in every detail.”
Colin turned slowly and studied his commander’s face, but the eyes were level and without guile and the strong lines of jaw and mouth were unwavering.
“Make-believe?“Colin Nobleasked quietly.
“Of course,” Peter Stride’s tone was curt and impatient, and Colin shrugged.
“Hell, I only work here,” and he turned away.
Peter lifted the binoculars and slowly traversed the length of the big machine from tail to nose, but there was no sign of life, every port and window still carefully covered and reluctantly he let his binoculars sink slightly until he was staring at the pitiful pile of bodies that still lay on the tarmac below the forward hatch.
